The Story of New Zealand's Internet

A Wellington woman was preparing a flounder. She had cut off the head and was slicing along the backbone with a sharp knife on a wooden cutting board. Suddenly, there was a loud bang and a flash of light!

Transcription

Richard Ram – General Manager, Reactive

“So when I was working at Flying Nun, I’d just got email. Email was just starting. And I basically said to Flying Nun, “We should get email”. Roger was honestly faxing hundreds of pages all over the world and their international toll bill was huge. I was saying, “Let’s start sending email”. And at that time, I’d started to talk to Mushroom Records in Australia and they’d gone onto CompuServe. And I think Simon Grigg was on CompuServe for a while and so, Mushroom Records came up with this idea, “Ok, we’re going to put Roger on CompuServe and he’ll be able to email us – batch the emails up and he can send them over once a day”. And I was saying, “What? What do you mean ‘once a day’?” And they said, ‘Well that’s how we’re going to do it. Once a day”. And I just thought, “Ahh ok”. But it made me laugh. You forget that that wasn’t that long ago. But if you’d told someone that, you know you’d just be saying, “What do you mean once a day?”.”

Down to the Wire is a project by Wellington digital agency Heyday. On our 10th anniversary we wanted say thanks to the those who created and curated the New Zealand Internet over the past 21 years. Without their expertise, dedication and excitement our company, and the country as a whole, would be quite different and nowhere near as wonderful. Visit the Heyday website »